GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which has clock speeds of 925 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 970M		7520 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 1130 (18%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970M		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (147%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 XT should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 970M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be just a bit (about 20%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 970M. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14880 (20%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M will be much (more or less 50%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14752 (50%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.